An International Journal of Cosmogenic Isotope Research

Radiocarbon An International Journal of Cosmogenic Isotope Research VOLUME 42 / NUMBER 1 / 2000 SPECIAL ISSUE In honor of Renee Kra, Managing Editor for nearly three decades • Tributes and color photographs • Retrospective articles • The future of 14C and AMS, and more Guest Editors E MARIAN SCOTT DOUGLAS D HARKNESS Editor A J T JULL Associate Editors J WARREN BECK GEORGE S BURR Managing Editor KIMBERLEY TANNER ELLIOTT Department of Geosciences The University of Arizona 4717 East Fort Lowell Road Tucson, Arizona 85712-1201 USA ISSN: 0033-8222 RADIOCARBON An International Journal of Cosmogenic Isotope Research Editor: A J T JULL Associate Editors: J WARREN BECK and GEORGE S BURR Managing Editor: KIMBERLEY TANNER ELLIOTT Interns: JACKIE LIND and MARK MCCLURE Subscriptions and Sales: KASHO SANTA CRUZ Managing Editor Emerita: RENEE S KRA Published by Department of Geosciences The University of Arizona Published three times a year at The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85712-1201 USA. © 2000 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona. All rights reserved. Subscription rate (2000): $120.00 (for institutions), $65.00 (for individuals). Foreign postage is extra. A com- plete price list, including Proceedings of International Conferences, special publications and back issues, appears on the inside back cover of this issue. Advertising rates available on request, or see http://www.radiocarbon.org/adrates.html. Missing issues will be replaced without charge only if claim is made within three months (six months for India, New Zealand and Australia) after the publication date. Claims for missing issues will not be honored if non- delivery results from failure by the subscriber to notify the Journal of an address change. Authors: See our “Information for Authors” document at http://www.radiocarbon.org/Authors/ for guidelines concerning manuscript submission and format. All correspondence and manuscripts should be addressed to the Managing Editor, RADIOCARBON, Department of Geosciences, The University of Arizona, 4717 East Fort Low- ell Road, Tucson, AZ 85712-1201 USA. Tel.: +1 520 881-0857; Fax: +1 520 881-0554; Internet: editor@radiocarbon.org. List of laboratories. Our comprehensive list of laboratories is published annually, and is also available on the WWW at http://www.radiocarbon.org/Info/lablist.html. We ask all laboratory directors to provide their laboratory code designation, as well as current telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses. Changes in names or addresses, additions or deletions should be reported to the Managing Editor. Conventional and AMS laboratories are now arranged in alphabetical order by country and we include laboratories listed by code designation. RADIOCARBON on the World Wide Web: http://www.radiocarbon.org/ RADIOCARBON is indexed and/or abstracted by the following sources: Anthropological Index; Anthropological Literature; Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts; Bibliography and Index of Geology (GeoRef); British Archaeological Bibliography; Chemical Abstracts; Chemistry Citation Index; Current Advances in Ecological and Environmental Sciences; Current Contents (ISI); FRANCIS (Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique – CNRS); Geographical Abstracts; Geological Abstracts; Oceanographic Literature Review; Science Citation Index; Social Sciences Citation Index. RADIOCARBON, Vol 42, Nr 1, 2000, p vii–xvi © 2000 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona A TRIBUTE TO RENEE KRA: RADIOCARBON MANAGING EDITOR FOR 30 YEARS Renee and Doug Harkness (the cowgirl and the kiltie) sample Scotch whiskey near Loch Lomond, Scotland during a mixer at the 1994 LSC Conference. An author begs Renee for a later submission deadline at the June 1988 14C Conference in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. vii viii A Tribute to Renee Kra Left: Renee is caught by surprise while dancing with Gordon Cook during the Second International Symposium on 14C and Archaeology in Groningen, the Netherlands, in September 1987. Right: Renee tours Helsinki in May 1990. Left: Renee is joined by friends in June 1990 at the University of California Lake Arrowhead Conference, the proceedings of which were published jointly by Radiocarbon and Springer-Verlag in Radiocarbon After Four Decades. Former Editor Austin Long is seated to her left. Right: A clearly labeled Renee prepares to board a tour bus during the August 1979 14C Conference in Bern and Heidelberg, Germany (apologies for the photo quality). RADIOCARBON, Vol 42, Nr 1, 2000, p 1–21 © 2000 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona THE CONTRIBUTION OF RADIOCARBON DATING TO NEW WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY R E Taylor Radiocarbon Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Riverside, California 92521 USA. Email: [email protected]. ABSTRACT. When introduced almost five decades ago, radiocarbon (14C) dating provided New World archaeologists with a common chronometric scale that transcended the countless site-specific and regional schemes that had been developed by four generations of field researchers employing a wide array of criteria for distinguishing relative chronological phases. A topic of long standing interest in New World studies where 14C values have played an especially critical role is the temporal framework for the initial peopling of the New World. Other important issues where 14C results have been of particular impor- tance include the origins and development of New World agriculture and the determination of the relationship between the western and Mayan calendars. It has been suggested that the great success of 14C was an important factor in redirecting the focus of American archaeological scholarship in the 1960s from chronology building to theory building, led to a noticeable improvement in US archaeological field methods, and provided a major catalyst that moved American archaeologists increas- ingly to direct attention to analytical and statistical approaches in the manipulation and evaluation of archaeological data. INTRODUCTION The aim of this discussion will be to summarize the most important contributions that 14C age deter- minations have made in understanding the process and pace of culture development of human societies in the Western Hemisphere. In reviewing these contributions, it might be helpful to note several conceptual and historical factors that condition how 14C values have been employed in New World archaeological studies in comparison and contrast to their utilization in other areas of the world. First of all, the entire period of human occupation of the Western Hemisphere involves the activities of anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens. With few exceptions, no competent researcher has proposed the existence of any pre-sapiens hominids in the New World. The consideration by paleo- anthropologists of the chronological problems and issues involving the geochronology of Pleistocene fossil hominids are exclusively the province of the students of Old World archaeology. Secondly, with one major exception, pre-Columbian New World societies did not possess textual-based records that survived for modern scholars to examine and thus there were no historical-based chronological systems to which archaeological features could be associated. The great exception is the textual tra- dition created by priestly elites of the Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula of ancient Mesoamerica (Mex- ico). Except for this textual corpus and the corpus of codicies that record pictographically events occurring in the few centuries before European contact in central Mexico, several other areas of ancient Mesoamerica and in a few other areas in the Americas, materials recovered through archaeological excavations provide the sole data base on which the reconstruction of the cultural history of the pre-European societies of North and South America can be based. In this sense, with the exceptions noted, New World archaeological studies have been undertaken within the intellectual contexts involved in the examination almost exclusively of nonhistoric or prehistoric societies. This has meant that, following the introduction of 14C dating, the most straightforward unit of New World archaeological chronology could have been expressed simply in “radiocarbon time” as in BP (before present), which will be followed in this discussion. This is in contrast to European practice, where chronology building included direct links to the historic chronologies of the circum Mediter- ranean and Near Eastern civilizations conditioned a need to convert 14C-based BP into calendar-based AD/BC units. It is true that New World archaeologists, in many cases, have followed the practice of converting BP to AD/BC units, perhaps influenced by the early editorial practice of Radiocarbon. This was necessary for the southwestern United States where comparisons with den- 1 2 R E Taylor drochronological data was required, and in eastern Mesoamerica where comparisons with Maya long count calendar based chronologies existed. However, in light of the subsequent calibration problems, in all other areas of the New World, it might have been prudent, from the beginning, to have represented their chronologies exclusively in radiocarbon time. Finally, as discussed in detail elsewhere (Taylor 2000a), an important feature of the development of professional prehistoric archaeological studies in the United States has been its 20th century development while almost entirely

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